Salt Cures

Old recipes called for and old timers used salt petre or salt peter. This potassium based product is no longer available for general use and has been replaced by sodium based products - sodium nitrite (Cure 1) or sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate (Cure 2).

These cures are also known as:

Curing salt

Tinted curing powder (TCP)

Prague powder 1 or 2

Modern cure

Tinted curing mixture (TCM)

FLP

Insta-cure 1 or 2

Pink curing salt

Cure # 1 is a basic cure that is used to cure all meats that require cooking, smoking, and canning. This would include poultry, fish, hams, bacon, luncheon meats, corned beef, pates, and many other products. Use when smoking or processing products at low temperatures. It is dyed pink so that it won't be mistaken for ordinary salt. It consists of 93.75% table salt and 6.25% sodium nitrate.

Cure # 2 is cure specifically formulated to be used for making dry cured products, such as pepperoni, hard salami, geonoa salami, proscuitti hams and dried farmers sausage. These are products that do not require cooking, smoking, or refrigeration. Cure #2 is sodium nitrate with a salt carrier. This cure acts as a time release, breaking down into sodium nitrite, then nitric oxide thus allowing for the much longer curing times required for these products, which can be up to 6 months. Dry curing meat or sausage properly cannot be done with Cure #1 which contains sodium nitrite only and dissipates too quickly.

Tip - Use 1 oz. per 25 lb. of ground meat. For smaller batches use 1 LEVEL TEASPOON per 5 lb. of meat. When adding cure # 1 as an ingredient for brines follow a recipe.